Fintech

AI Model Betting Is the New Fantasy Football | PYMNTS.com

Published

2 days ago

August 30, 2025

Sports gambling has DraftKings. Political junkies have PredictIt. And now the world’s nerdiest corner — the artificial intelligence (AI) scene — has its own set of bettors, where people wager actual money on whether Google’s Gemini will dunk on OpenAI’s GPT-5 this month.

Forget fantasy football, this is fantasy machine learning.

People are placing their bets on markets like Kalshi, where they can trade on the outcome of real-world events, everything from when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will wed to whether Google will break up and, of course, the AI model race. Kalshi saw 10 times the volume on AI trades compared with the start of the year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Kalshi’s markets are extremely efficient and serve as a source of truth on the likelihood of all events, including AI model progress,” Jack Such, a spokesperson for the company, told PYMNTS.

So who’s winning based on the bets?

“Gemini is the current market leader for ‘Best AI’ by the end of 2025,” Such said.

On Kalshi, Gemini shows a 58% probability of winning, compared with 19% for ChatGPT, as of midmorning on Thursday (Aug. 28). The third spot goes to Grok, at 17%. Claude, which Menlo Ventures said was the enterprise favorite, clocks in at 2% and tied with Meta’s Llama.

The total trading volume reached $8.1 million.

Kalshi is just one of several platforms that are pivoting to AI trading.

Other players include Polymarket, an offshore crypto-based prediction market, Manifold Markets, Metaculus and other sites.

Which AI model is winning globally? The AI community abroad agrees with the Americans. Polymarket, which is only available to non-Americans, predicts that Google will win by year’s end, at 66% odds. OpenAI comes in at 16% probability while xAI is third with 14%.

See also: Crypto Firms Grapple with Bank-Like Risks, Without the Regulation

Betting on Anything in the World

How Kalshi works: People bet yes or no on outcomes in the real world, such as whether the Fed will cut short-term interest rates by 25 basis points in September (76% probability it will) or who will win the Nobel Peace Prize (Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei, is at 20% probability and Donald Trump at 10%).

Bettors buy contracts tied to these outcomes at prices between a penny and 99 cents, settling at $1. For example, if a bettor buys a contract for 40 cents and they guess the outcome correctly, they are paid $1. If they guessed wrong, they lose their 40 cents. Bettors can also sell the contract before there’s an outcome if they see the contract price go up or down.

In a tie, the default would be a negative outcome.

For AI models, results will be determined by the rankings on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena Leaderboard at the end of the year, according to Kalshi.

Currently, the leaderboard shows Gemini 2.5 pro slightly ahead of GPT-5 for first place, followed closely by Claude Opus.

One Kalshi user noticed a tie earlier this month and wrote, “it’s a tight race on LMArena. I don’t understand why the spread is so drastic. Huge earnings for people who bet on GPT with decent odds that it will flip.”

Kalshi began allowing bettors to trade on AI models in 2023. “We were confident in consumer demand for these products because of the rapid growth of AI and the economic and political consequences of model progress,” Such said.

Kalshi said the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulates it as a financial exchange for trading futures, swaps and options on commodities.

“Understanding that Kalshi is regulated … helps reassure users that they are engaging with a platform that adheres to the highest standards of operation and accountability,” the company says on its site.

Here’s to hoping the bet will be good.

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Fintech

European Commission to Impose ‘Modest’ Penalties in Google AdTech Case | PYMNTS.com

Published

19 hours ago

August 31, 2025

Hrishi

When the European Commission announces the penalties in an antitrust case involving Google’s AdTech business in the coming weeks, it will reportedly order the company to pay a “modest” fine and will not require it to sell part of its AdTech business.

The fine is likely to be less than the 4.3 billion euros the Commission ordered Google to pay in another case in 2018, Reuters reported Friday (Aug. 29), citing unnamed sources.

Asked about the report by Reuters, the Commission decline to comment, while Google pointed to a 2023 blog post in which it criticized the regulator’s interpretation of the AdTech sector, according to the report.

The report attributed the imposition of what it described as modest penalties to the approach of the new EU antitrust chief, Teresa Ribera, who it said focuses on getting companies to end anti-competitive practices rather than punishing them with big fines.

In the AdTech case, the European Commission accused Google of abusing its dominance in the online AdTech industry since 2014. The regulator alleged that the company had wielded its market power on both sides of the supply chain by showing favoritism toward its own ad exchange, AdX, in matching auctions.

Google argued that serving both advertisers and publishers is a common industry practice, competitors operate similar AdTech businesses catering to both sides of the market, and integrated technology stacks facilitate high-quality connections between advertisers and publishers.

According to Friday’s Reuters report, advertising revenue accounted for 75.6% of Google’s total revenue in 2024.

Google also faces pressure in the United States, where it is in a legal battle with the Justice Department, and a federal judge determined that the company unlawfully maintained monopolies in critical areas of the online ad industry.

It was reported in May that the Justice Department called for Google to divest some key components of its digital advertising business, including its AdX marketplace and its DFP ad-serving platform.

The Justice Department argued at the time in a court filing that such divestitures were essential to dismantle Google’s dominance and restore competition in the markets for ad exchanges and publisher ad servers.

Fintech

Chinese Money Laundering Networks Flagged as ‘Severe Threat’ by FinCEN | PYMNTS.com

Published

3 days ago

August 29, 2025

Hrishi

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has issued a warning that Chinese money laundering networks are now among the most significant threats to the U.S. financial system, fueling operations of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels.

In a new advisory released Thursday (August 28), FinCEN said groups including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are increasingly using Chinese money laundering networks to clean billions in drug proceeds. The networks have become effective partners because they can move cash quickly, absorb losses and leverage demand from Chinese nationals seeking to bypass Beijing’s strict currency controls. By pairing cartel dollars with Chinese demand for U.S. currency, these networks have created what FinCEN called a “mutualistic relationship” that strengthens both sides.

The 15-page report outlines how these networks operate. They rely on informal value transfer systems, “mirror” transactions and trade-based money laundering schemes to shift funds across borders without physically moving cash. Some recruit Chinese students in the U.S. to act as money mules, depositing cartel cash into U.S. bank accounts and disguising the flows as tuition or living expenses. Others purchase electronics, luxury goods, and real estate with illicit funds, later reselling or exporting those assets to create the appearance of legitimate commerce.

“Chinese money laundering networks are professional money launderers that play a vital role in laundering the cartels’ drug proceeds in the United States,” the advisory said. “This is due to the speed and effectiveness of their operations, as well as their willingness to absorb financial losses and assume risks for the cartels and other clients.”

The advisory also lists “red flag” indicators for financial institutions, ranging from students depositing unusually large sums of cash to small businesses with outsized luxury goods transactions. FinCEN urged banks to reference the identifier “CMLN-2025-A003” when filing suspicious activity reports, and to pay special attention to transactions tied to unlicensed money service businesses, informal transfer systems and trade-based schemes.

FinCEN’s move follows a January executive order that designated several cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, underscoring the administration’s concern that cartel financing now poses not only a criminal but also a national security threat. The advisory ends with a reminder that financial institutions are on the front line of detecting suspicious flows and that voluntary information sharing under existing safe harbors can help expose networks that otherwise thrive in the shadows.

Fintech

Revolut Considers Hiring Advisers on US Banking Acquisition | PYMNTS.com

Published

4 days ago

August 28, 2025

Hrishi

U.K. FinTech Revolut is reportedly getting closer to entering the U.S. banking space.

The company is mulling hiring investment bankers to advise it on a possible acquisition of an American lender to bolster its growth in the U.S., Bloomberg News reported Thursday (Aug. 28), citing sources familiar with the matter.

One source told the news outlet that Revolut is still deciding between an acquisition or applying for its own banking license, and that these deliberations are happening as the company readies the launch of savings products for U.S. consumers in the weeks ahead.

The report follows a similar story from the Financial Times late last month, which said Revolut was considering the acquisition of a U.S.-chartered bank. A spokesperson for Revolut declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS.

As the Bloomberg report notes, Revolut has operated for years in the U.S. by collaborating with other banks. But now, the company and its competitors are seeking a greater share of the banking space amid a more relaxed attitude toward financial regulation in Washington.

Revolut is still in the process of establishing its banking presence in its home country. It took the FinTech more than three years to land a U.K. banking license, and while it eventually secured that permission, it must operate under certain restrictions. Per Bloomberg, Revolut has said it’s in the closing stages of this process.

“Given Revolut’s global scale, this is the largest and most complex mobilization ever undertaken in the UK,” the firm said in a statement last month. “A thorough review is an expected part of the process and getting this right is more important than rushing to meet a specific date.”

Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky has said that the company’s “grow fast” ethos had been ill-advised because a smaller firm would have been able to obtain licenses more easily than one the size of Revolut.

Meanwhile, last month saw a report that the British government and the U.K. central bank had suffered a “falling out” due to delays in allowing a full banking license for Revolut.

Bank of England Gov. Andrew Bailey denied that report, saying the central bank and British treasury have a good relationship.